The present invention is directed to a wafer processing system and method therefor and more specifically to a system where photoresist is deposited on a spinning silicon wafer which will be used in the manufacture of integrated circuits. A typical system which has been used in the past is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,645,581 entitled "Apparatus and Method for Handling Articles" with Lasch et al as inventors and assigned to the present assignee. This patent discloses transfer means in the form of vacuum arms for transferring wafers from a supply magazine to a spin processor and then to a discharge magazine.
A known modification of the technique shown in the patent is instead of the use of a transfer arm, a moving shuttle is utilized between the send or supply magazine and the spin processor. This was, in fact, a prior product of the assignee.
While both of the foregoing techniques are satisfactory, adapting such techniques to relatively large diameter silicon wafers, of for example, five inches, requires the overall length of the entire handling system to be increased. This is difficult especially with sicilcon wafer processing systems which are located in clean rooms with enclosures where space is limited; in other words, where a handling system is being reinforced to handle larger sized silicon wafers, such retrofitting from a practical standpoint must be accomplished in the same space as formerly used for smaller wafer size handling equipment.
Thus, there is a need for a compact, automatic spin processor which sequentially handles relatively large size silicon wafers in a compact space but yet with a fast throughput or transfer time.